I was recently inspired to write a poem in Spanish of my own, after spending quite a while reading the works of others. This, I preformed at Open Mic Night (last Friday), dedicated to the foreign language teachers (namely one, because the other had left by then). It’s entitled “Por Qué Cerramos Nuestros Ojos,” or, “Why We Close Our Eyes.”

So Open Mic Night turned out to be a big hit. My friends and I managed to tape most of it, with many technical errors involved, and with any luck, I might have some videos up… Within the next few years…

Anyways, my poem:

Cuando cierras tus ojos

El mundo es lo que tú deseas

Y no tienes que ver la verdad.

Cuando cierro mis ojos

Estoy feliz

Y finjo que todo se queda bien.

Cuando cerramos nuestros ojos

Nos encerramos

Para que nadie más puede entrar.

El mundo nunca ha sido gran.

No pretendemos que fue.

Imaginamos lo que podía ha ser

Y lo que nunca fue.

Cuando cerramos nuestros ojos

La vida real es demasiado para suportar a veces.

Cerramos nuestros ojos para escondernos

Y para pensar.

Deseamos creer lo que es falso

Y sólo por uno momento

Cuando cerramos nuestros ojos.

When you close your eyes

The world is what you want it to be

And you don’t have to see the truth.

When I close my eyes

I am happy

And I pretend everything will stay fine.

When we close our eyes

We lock ourselves away

So no one else may come in.

The world has never been great.

We do not pretend it was.

We imagine what could have been

And what never was.

When we close our eyes

Real life is too much to bear sometimes.

We close our eyes to hide

And to think.

We want to believe what is fake

If only for a moment

When we close our eyes.

This was my second act, by the way. To start, Cali and I preformed a cover of Davedays’ parody of Feliz Navidad. Must have been interesting to see some kid sing about not knowing Spanish, then appear with original poetry in the language…

Again, very big hit.

Oh, and this year, j’ai français Un aussi, mais j’aime mieux l’espagnol. One of our first French assignments was to write an introduction of ourselves (in French, oui), so I wrote that I like Spanish, poetry, and Spanish poetry. Of course!